


Please Wait for Assistance

by GottaGoBuyCheese



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (I'll add that to all my stuff EVENTUALLY it just might...take a while), (which!! I am still screaming about!!!!), Grocery Shopping, I am w a y overdue adding this tag but, M/M, Minor Swearing, Other, PDA, POV Outsider, Podfic Available, Podfic Welcome, Slice of Life, and the author has A Thing about self-checkout machines, not Posterior Descending Artery, self-checkout machines are miracle-proof, that's Public Displays of Affection, the author has a thing about grocery stores, these are not the same thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 19:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21361579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GottaGoBuyCheese/pseuds/GottaGoBuyCheese
Summary: The most they’d managed to accomplish during their entire grocery jaunt had been hand brushes and ear nips — and, on one memorable occasion, a butt pinch that turned both parties into stammering, red-faced messes all the way from the cheeses to the seafood — but it was very clear what theymeantto be doing, if only they ever got around to it.Ciara didn’t like to concern herself with the affairs of strangers (barely even concerned herself with the affairs of acquaintances, but she was working on that), and she very much would have liked tonotknow these details about the couple holding up the queue, but seeing as she’d spent half her trip trapped behind them in the produce aisle, the dairy aisle, the uni-student-on-a-budget aisle, and even the stationary aisle, she came to the dreadful conclusion that there would be no way forward but through.In other news: Local Uni Student Attempts to Acquire Food, Blocked by Local Angel/Demon Duo, More at 11.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 272
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens, Chaotic Omens: The Fallout of a Big Bang





	Please Wait for Assistance

**Author's Note:**

> I think it started out as a conversation about who would get more flustered with PDA, and then it devolved into complaining about self-checkout machines, and then...here we are!
> 
> Shoutout to curtaincall for proofreading, and the GOBB server for being a bunch of enablers XD

Truthfully, Ciara just wanted to go home.

_Truthfully_, she wanted to grab her literature professor by the tie and hurl him into the Thames, but the legal fees would be a nightmare, and she didn’t have enough self-preservation left in her to try and be discreet. So instead, she planned a nice evening in: find her fluffiest, warmest socks, dig up that old, oversized sweater she couldn’t bear to throw out, get out the pint of ice cream she’d been saving for occasions like this, and put on a cute nature documentary that hopefully wouldn’t end with a morbidly depressing and existentially terrifying reminder of how fucked they all were.

She’d gotten as far as finding a clean spoon for the ice cream before realizing she should probably at least make an _attempt_ at having real food before the week officially ended, so she rummaged around for some decently clean clothes in the pile of Anxiety that had been growing in the far corner of her bedroom for the past month, put on her comfy shoes, and tried to mimic a Real Human Person long enough to make it to the grocery store and back.

Which was how she found herself stuck in the checkout queue, her left hand clutching a package of spinach and some instant noodles, her right hand holding a single spring onion, and her soul simmering with the overwhelming urge to smack the couple making out by the card machine.

All right, maybe “making out” was a bit generous. The most they’d managed to accomplish during their entire grocery jaunt had been hand brushes and ear nips — and, on one memorable occasion, a butt pinch that turned both parties into stammering, red-faced messes all the way from the cheeses to the seafood — but it was very clear what they _meant_ to be doing, if only they ever got around to it.

Ciara didn’t like to concern herself with the affairs of strangers (barely even concerned herself with the affairs of acquaintances, but she was working on that), and she very much would have liked to _not_ know these details about the couple holding up the queue, but seeing as she’d spent half her trip trapped behind them in the produce aisle, the dairy aisle, the uni-student-on-a-budget aisle, and even the stationary aisle, she came to the dreadful conclusion that there would be no way forward but through.

It was icing on the cake, really. The cherry on top of a truly atrocious week.

“Er, excuse me,” she said meekly, staring fixedly at the toothpaste ad above the taller man’s head. “Uh, excuse me, sirs, but your groceries —”

_Unexpected item in bagging area. Remove item before continuing._

“Your groceries are —”

_Item removed from bagging area. Please return item to bagging area._

“Your —”

“Goodness!” snapped the blond-haired man, slapping a hand to a scarlet ear as he whirled around to face his grinning companion. His elbow knocked the pasta onto the precariously balanced bag of onions, sending one tumbling to the floor, where it rolled past its cousin the radish and their neighbor the russet potato and bumped to a stop by Ciara’s trainers. She sighed, and bent to pick it up.

“Really, dear,” continued the man, oblivious to his mistreatment of their groceries and Ciara’s patience, “I am _trying_ to figure out this till. I’ll not have you distracting me with your — your _distractions_.”

“Oh, that’s hardly fair, angel,” retorted the other man, a tall, red-haired fellow with sunglasses that really looked like they belonged on someone cooler. He cocked his hip against the stack of paper bags, sending one sliding dangerously toward the bagging area, which was still caterwauling its displeasure about the fallen onion. “Consider it payback for the dessert aisle.”

“Oh please, as if you didn’t enjoy that,” Mr. Angel sniffed dismissively. His nonchalance surprised Ciara, because although he had been the one to initiate the infamous Aisle Four Butt Pinch, his face at the time had outshone his partner’s in the way Sirius A outshone Gliese 752 B. But (haha, butt) she had to concede his recovery time was far superior to that of Sunglasses Man, who, for all his swagger and stylish posturing, turned into a stammering, fire-cheeked bean pole as soon as Mr. Angel so much as smiled his way. “Besides, I hardly think now is the, er, appropriate time or place for your, erm, temptations. As it were.”

_Temptations?_ Ciara mouthed to herself. Temptations. He _actually said_ — without losing a _beat_ —

But whatever. Whatever! At least Mr. Angel was talking sense now.

“What, don’t tell me you actually care about that nonsense!” Sunglasses Man’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline as he scoffed. “It only bothers you because you’re the one getting all flustered now.”

“I wouldn’t be flustered if it were just us!”

“Oh,” said Sunglasses Man. “_Oh._” A very small, very insignificant part of Ciara found it almost adorable how squeaky his voice had gone, but by and large, the rest of her just wanted him and his partner to get out of the damn store.

Sunglasses Man snapped his fingers. In the very next moment, Mr. Angel had him pressed against the counter by his coat, one spidery hand squishing the bread for balance.

_Unexpected item in bagging area. Remove item before continuing._

“It’s like they think we can’t see them,” she told the woman beside her.

“I am just here for these tomatoes,” the woman managed to say.

“Aren’t we all,” Ciara muttered. Sunglasses Man had twisted out of Mr. Angel’s grip, and the two of them were doing some sort of cat-and-mouse dance by the bagging area, ducking in and out of each other’s teasing grips. Gathering the last of her wits, she cleared her throat and made another attempt to break through their blissful bubble. “Excuse me, sirs, but —”

A loud _thud_ interrupted her; Mr. Angel had Sunglasses Man shoved against the till again, and the poor bread was taking the brunt of it. “Oh, _angel_,” crowed Sunglasses Man, a breathless sort of delight coloring his voice as his partner hooked plump fingers around his lapels. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Well, I did learn from the best,” remarked Mr. Angel, a pleased smirk curling his lips as he leaned forward on his tiptoes and —

_Unexpected item in bagging area. Remove item before continuing._

“Your bread —” she tried. “Your bread is going to —”

_Item removed from bagging area. Please return item to bagging area._

“Please, can you just —”

_Unexpected item in bagging area._

“— just, just maybe pay first, if that’s not —”

_Item removed from bagging area._

“— too much to ask?” she sighed in defeat. She felt herself age another few years as the infatuated couple continued to ignore every reasonable rule of polite society. It was far too late in the semester for second-hand embarrassment, but the lady beside her was staring at the floor with cheeks redder than the tomatoes in her basket.

“I just want some vegetables,” she told the onion in her palm. “Just one single leaf, even. That’s my only goal for the week.” Late-semester blues always made her anthropomorphize things, but the onion looked apologetic on behalf of its soon-to-be owners.

It was a lot of effort just for some vegetables and instant noodles, and truthfully, Ciara just wanted to go home. But even more truthfully, her meals this week had consisted almost entirely of packaged sugar and glorified salt. It was already Saturday, and she had promised herself One Vegetable Per Week; this spinach was really all she had going for her.

She owed herself that much, at least.

Holding this thought at the front of her mind, she grit her teeth, inhaled deeply through her nose, and glared at the toothpaste ad harder than ever.

“You dropped your onion,” she said loudly, thrusting out her palm. Keeping her eyes fixed on the ad, she took one daring step forward, then another, until she was close enough to tap Mr. Angel on the shoulder. “Your onion,” she repeated, tilting her neck to keep the toothpaste ad in view. “You dropped it.”

Mr. Angel jolted beneath her touch. His hands leapt back from Sunglasses Man’s lapels to clutch his own bowtie, and when he spun to face her, his face was flaming hotter than a class O star. “Oh — oh, goodness! I didn’t — how long have you — yes of course, thank — _thank_ you, yes, the onion, of course, thank you, my dear, that’s — I’ll take that, _goodness,_ yes. Crowley!” he said in a strangled hiss, wrenching his head around to stare at his partner. Sunglasses Man — Crowley? — had the decency to look sheepish. “I thought you — _took care of things!_”

“I thought I did!” Cro — nah, Sunglasses Man — insisted. “We haven’t been kicked out, have we?”

A miracle, that, Ciara thought to herself.

“I was under the impression we _wouldn’t be seen_,” Mr. Angel whispered fiercely.

“We weren’t seen by anyone important!”

“Crowley!” admonished Mr. Angel. His cheeks were still ablaze, but he schooled his expression into something marginally less chagrined. “So sorry about that, my dear. We’ve just finished up, please feel free to carry on. And I do hope you have a most wonderful day.”

Ciara frowned. “But you haven’t even — oh. Wait, what?”

The groceries were gone, and the machine had stopped shrieking its displeasure. Ciara spun on her heel, but the mysterious, self-absorbed couple was nowhere to be seen. Even Tomato Lady seemed completely unperturbed, as if this was just another day at the store.

And perhaps it was. With a sigh that could put her grandmother to shame, she laid the spinach on the counter and tossed the noodles beside it, placing the spring onion gingerly on top. When the peace held for another two seconds, she fished out her card to pay. Then —

_Unexpected item in bagging area. Remove item before continuing_.

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thankfully, after that dreadful experience, the miracle _did_ kick in, and not only did Ciara find her comfiest clothes and a soothing nature documentary that wouldn't make her cry, she ALSO discovered that she did in fact pass that notoriously difficult final! Wahoo! <strike>(Whaaat I'm not projecting my hopes onto this, pshhh)</strike>
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts about it, and to everyone getting into the holiday season and ramping up towards finals: GOOD LUCK! 
> 
> (If the next thing you see from me isn't that OTGW fic please Someone drop a piano on me)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Please Wait For Assistance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21954277) by [idioglossia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idioglossia/pseuds/idioglossia)


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